22 CONTEXT 181 : SEPTEMBER 2024 beyond the means of the remaining indigenous lower-middle and working classes, and were a manifestation of a growing inequality. The principal disadvantage of this kind of social change is the displacement of the working classes, and a reversal of previous trends, with the poor increasingly moving out to the suburbs. Changes in tenure, from a rental market to a predominantly house-buying one, reduced the number of available affordable rental properties. The only way for the working class to remain was through council or social housing, the persistence of which has limited gentrification, holding back homogenisation and ensuring that lower-income households can still live in central areas of the city. This process is still happening today, for example in Hoxton, Stoke Newington, Elephant and Castle and Peckham Rye, and if it continues there will soon be very little run-down historic housing stock in inner London left to gentrify. State or developer-led gentrification In the 1970s and 80s a very different kind of gentrification emerged, whereby entire workingclass and formerly industrial areas were redeveloped as new neighbourhoods of expensive private homes and luxury office blocks. The difference here was that change was initiated not by individual ‘gentrifiers’ but by property developers and national or local governments working together. The Isle of Dogs is the classic example of this, where the Thatcher government removed all the standard planning controls to create a socalled ‘enterprise zone’ and encourage investment and redevelopment on a vast scale. This rapid second wave of gentrification was made possible by London’s emergence as a leading financial centre in the 1980s, especially after the deregulation of the Stock Exchange and internationalisation of securities dealing. These brought an expansion in City employment and waves of finance workers moving to these newly built gentrified areas – a far wealthier group than the pioneer gentrifiers. Whitechapel has also seen dramatic change in the last 20 years and at a bewildering rate, particularly at its western end where it abuts the City, with clusters of new-build offices, flats and hotels entirely changing the character of this historic East End district. Free-schoolmeal eligibility here (a reliable indicator of poverty) was the highest anywhere in London in 2010 but has since fallen considerably, suggesting social change. A primary school built in State or developer-led gentrification: the Isle of Dogs, seen from Bermondsey, in 2023 (Photo: Derek Kendall) Old and new Whitechapel: cityfringe development pressures at the west end of Commercial Road in 2017 (Photo: Derek Kendall)
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